I was very happy when the band of goblin singers and dancers I had recently admitted to live in my fort (to entertain the patrons in my tavern, which was of some repute locally) turned out to all be werebadgers. This caused the whole attempt to fail in a cascading manner, as at first I thought the problem had miraculously resolved itself once my guards had killed all hostiles, and I failed to provide the necessary precautions for an epidemic of lycanthropy (not that I would have known how to, anyhow); only to witness the carnage return about a month later, after which the fort consisted of one wounded, elderly dwarf as a leader and a dozen or so children. Most of these I saw transform back to dwarves, so I abandoned the fortress to ruin.

Anyway, that was the first time I actually played Dwarf Fortress as-intended instead of just fucking around and losing interest. It took probably around a hundred hours across multiple versions, but I really recommend Dwarf Fortress nonetheless. It's kinda like Rimworld as a story generator, and also DF doesn't have a win-state (losing is fun), so it isn't the gameiest game ig? And also the mechanics run deeper than dwarf can dig, and the UX might be a hurdle (though the Steam version improved on this significantly, as it also has a tutorial).

Werebadgers made my fort tore itself apart. 6/5 best game ever